Holding On
by PallaPlease
Summary: [Season III - Written 10/21/02.]  A short, very outdated Matrix/AndrAIa piece, following entrapment in the Games.


Continuity: Season III.  
  
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Holding On  
  
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Somewhere along the line, she had lost count of how many systems they had come across, how many times the tiny spark of hope she clung to flickered dimmer. Looking down at the puddles growing steadily around her feet, fed by the thick gray rain pounding down from the sky, she wiped at the tears stinging in her eyes and clutched the small basket of provisions to her body, hunching over to try and keep it at least partly dry. The echoes of her hurried steps were dulled clicks and she wondered, briefly, where the naïve child in her had gone to, as if her childhood was leaking out into the echoes fading in her ears. In response to that thought, she picked up her pace, forcibly replacing the lump of wistful memory in her throat with one of focused determination. She had to be strong, had to be resilient and full of hope; she had been thus for four hours. Four hours since that Game…  
  
Glittering blue hair, damp and limp, swirled in a violent tornado as she shook her head almost angrily, silver droplets of rain - or tears - plummeting to the ground in forgettable arcs. The folded fins along her lower arms quivered in the wave of emotion that spasmed through her thin, maturing body and she avoided looking at her glimmering reflection in the dark windows of the closed stores lining the empty street. It was strange, seeing herself…change from what she used to be, her old out fit warped to fit and mold to her taller height and longer limbs. She wasn't a child anymore and she hated knowing it, hated having to face all the curious emotions and changes she was feeling without a central maternal figure in her life. She would have done anything to have had Dot there to explain what was happening the first time she menstruated, when she had cried in pain and confusion, trying to reassure Frisket that she was fine and asking him to find Enzo, just in case it was serious.  
  
Rounding a corner down a ways, she smiled absently. Enzo - or Matrix, as he' taken to calling himself in spite of her teasing - was a large part of the dizzying emotions that had shifted strangely, slowly from the adoring fondness she had always professed for him to something else she didn't truly understand. But it was all right: one day she would understand it, she knew she would. Someday.  
  
The rain was beginning to slow, its pace growing less frantic as she pushed open the hotel lobby's front door, ignoring the looks various sprites and binomes gave her, walking quickly up the thick white staircase to the second floor. Dark spots formed on the scarlet carpeting in the hallway where water dripped of her hair and arm fins to the floor. Pausing before the door of the hotel room they were sharing, the three of them, she keyed in the OPEN number on the keypad and pushed the door open with her hip.  
  
"Miss me?" AndrAIa smiled, dropping the basket on the small oval table near the fore of the partitioned room.  
  
Matrix glanced up from his position in the miniscule kitchen and he granted one of his rare smiles, a slight upward twitching of his lips. "Maybe," he conceded, the replacement eye he had recently acquired glinting under the overhead light. "Or," he added thoughtfully, "maybe not." He grinned at her retort of sticking her tongue out childishly. "Who wants to know?"  
  
She came into the kitchen, which was more of a small dent in the wall with various appliances, punching his muscled arm lightly, knowing fully well that it wouldn't hurt him in the least. "What're you making?" she cocked her head to one side, blue hair obscuring the freckles on her cheeks as she leaned forward.  
  
"I'm not making anything," he told her innocently. "You're making dinner tonight."  
  
AndrAIa pinched him.  
  
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Notes: This was originally written October 21, 2001, following the first few episodes of Season IV aired on Cartoon Network. Unfortunately, and I don't know how many might recall that weekend, FanFiction.net was acting up (as it does at times), and the stories though loaded were never posted. I finally tracked it down. ^^; And I write much better now...  
  
Feedback: Appreciated, but not overwhelmingly expected. Please, do take the time to comment. Two words, even.  
  
Disclaimer: I own nothing. 


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